The Essayist #5: The Efficacy of Pain

This was started last week and left half-finished. It's somewhat circular, but I offer it anyway. Eugene Volokh, whose quote started the controversey, has since posted an update of ideas here, which is worth looking at. I hadn't intended it as part of the Terry Schiavo bonfire, but since that's on everyone's mind, I feel obligated to point out that when I hear people saying "Oh, the woman's suffered enough," I keep asking myself "Suffered enough for what?"


Could you accept executing a man like this, with a flogging before a non-gallows hanging?

What if you were told that he was a serial rapist and murderer who preyed on children?

Eugene Volokh, the blogger and law professor, has no problem with it:

I like civilization, but some forms of savagery deserve to be met not just with cold, bloodless justice but with the deliberate infliction of pain, with cruel vengeance rather than with supposed humaneness or squeamishness. I think it slights the burning injustice of the murders, and the pain of the families, to react in any other way.

Me, I'm not so sure. I've always found something disordered in the lethal injection table, because it's so bloodlessly clinical; execution made safe and clean, down to the last alcohol swab (a longtime foil of stand-up comics). Me for a hanging, public-style, where the crimes against the community are avenged before they eyes of the community. The soft transformation of existence to non-existence is what strikes me as truly creepy.

Yet at the same time, flogging before hanging just strikes me as gratuitous. To knowingly inflict pain, and to derive moral satisfaction therefrom, is a dangerous area to be getting into. If our purpose is to engage in a killing, let us engage in a killing, and be done with it. If our purpose is to inflict pain, then let us inflict pain, and then release. To inflict pain without the possibility of learning from pain is to de-humanize the victim, and to misunderstand the purpose of pain.

Pain having a purpose at all is an idea not much spoken of in modern America. We do not believe in pain. We believe in life, liberty and the pursuit of pain's opposite. This is noted among both sides of our political perspective: our liberals (aka "conservatives") believe pain is caused by excessive government; sweep that out of the way, liberals argue, and humanity will solve its own problems, with freedom and money. Our socialists (aka "liberals") believe that pain is an evil to be eradicated from every corner in which it might inhabit, except for pain caused to enemies of the people, which is deserved. Both groups rail against any discomfort, inconvenience, or hurdle standing in their way.

The liberal view is slightly preferable to the socialist, however naive it may be, because it holds pain as something to be transcended by the individual, not numbed away by the collective. The latter approach, sympathetic as anyone may be to it, runs counter to the Reality Principle: that everything which exists has a cause independent of it, a purpose it fulfills, however unpleasantly.

So what is the purpose of pain? You know what it is biologically: a signal of damage to the brain from the body, data that something has gone wrong. And like any piece of data, what matters is what you do about it. Some pain, like that coming from a cut, indicates that you should be more careful when you try to cut cheese. Should you do so, the pain will be avoided in the future. Other pain, like that you get in your muscles after exercise, tells you exactly what you wanted to hear: that you had a good workout. You'll want to repeat the experience as often as possible, until you have obtained the goal that you want. Thus the principle of gym: "No pain, no gain."

But outside that aerobic context, who want to hear that kind of talk? Who wants to be told that pain is a necessary evil, even a positive force in life? Who could even beging to see the positive aspects of pain except sadomasochists and people so buffered by money from the twists of fate that they'll never have to experience any pain they don't wish to?

I think this is an unacknowledged part of our political discourse. Liberals ("conservatives") can see that pain has a utility, albeit a negative one, and are willing to reserve to themselves the right and capacity to use it. Such folks tend to have a opinion of capital punishment, corporal punishment, the cruelties of the marketplace, and war that agrees to their use, given certain circumstances. Socialists ("liberals") hate war, hate the death penalty, hate spanking, and despise the invisible hand. Using these means to achieve any end, be it international security, local order, discipline among children, or wealth, is unacceptable to the leftist, because, in his mind, the means do not correspond to the ends.

War and spanking and the marketplace, and possibly the death penalty, cause suffering to those that do not deserve to suffer, for various reasons. Civilians killed in the crossfire of battle are certainly innocent, and the poor and unlucky businessmen are not just innocent but arguably wronged. Spanking just makes children resentful and quarrelsome, we are told, and the death penalty restores nothing to anyone.

Ignoring the merits of these arguments, we may see the core idea: to take action that may cause unjust suffering is wrong, to use suffering as a tool of civilization is idiotic at best and monstrous at worst. The notion is certainly consistent, and at first glance, well within the boundaries of Judeo-Christian tradition.

The problem with the argument is that pain and suffering, unquestionable physical realities though they be, are not absolutes. A child who gets soap in his eye is in agony unprecedented, a youth would scoff at such woes, but in the throes of unrequited love is suicidal, to the head-shaking amusement of more experienced men. All new pain is intense to the point of unbearability. Then the mind and body learn that it is not the end, and is thence able to withstand it.

Which brings us back to the wrongness of torturing someone and then killing them. Using pain to change behavior can be permissible, depending on the degree of damage done and the goal being pursued. Using pain to achieve pain, without offering possibility for behavioral change is simply indulging our appetites. There is much to be argued about regarding the efficacy of pain, where the lines should be laid, how to tell when you've crossed the line from reasonable firmness to abuse of power. But before we can have that conversation, we must accept the idea that pain has a purpose, and sometimes, it's the most effective way to communicate.